I have a confession. Up until recently, I thought boiled potatoes in butter were the most uninspiring way to serve up a spud. Give me them fried, roasted, baked, mashed, dauphinoised or even hasslebacked over boiled any day.
That was until I visited the channel island of Jersey, the home of the Jersey Royal. I experienced this special potato boiled and served with butter, then garlic butter, and even on its lonesome. Its subtle but unique, nutty flavour and perfect, firm texture made me re-evaluate my misguided preconceptions.
Not only do I have a newfound love for Jersey’s biggest export – roughly 25 per cent of the land on the island is dedicated to growing Jersey Royals – I also have newfound respect.
This is thanks to the expert caterers Binney and Boarder at Manor Farm, which is owned by the wonderful Christine and Didier, who’ve been married for 39 years. As entertaining as they are hardworking, I can’t help thinking the pair really ought to have their own reality show – it’d be 10 times funnier than Jeremy Clarkson’s.
After a taste of this season’s first Jersey Royals, we visit a côtil. A name unique to Jersey’s dialect Jèrriais, a côtil refers to the ancient, south-facing slopes on the island, so steep that the potatoes must be planted and harvested almost entirely by hand, with the help of an ancient plough. I try lifting a few, sliding down the hill in the muddy, sandy earth, getting lashed by wind and rain and trying not to fall; I am utterly exhausted after five minutes of “work”. Never will I look at this unassuming root vegetable in the same way again.
They’re grown all over the island, which not only makes for some breathtaking and history-rich views – potato fields with a backdrop of ancient castles, postcard beaches or Second World War bunkers from the German occupation, anyone? – but painstaking work.
Though most of the farmers I meet prefer them in their pure form, Joe Baker of restaurant Pêtchi shows us just how much can be done. From a tempura with fermented chili and a cured egg yolk, and Jersey pearls with wild garlic and the first of the English asparagus, to a charred flatbread that has a wonderful, almost tacky texture, Baker pushes the boundaries past what you’d expect from the humble potato. There’s even a dessert with Jersey Royal and vanilla ice cream with warm chocolate mousse; earthy, textured and unmistakenly potato-y. This humble veg knows no bounds.
Aside from being eaten, it turns out they can also be drunk. As most supermarkets want small Jersey Royals, usually no bigger than 55cm (farmers say it’s not true that the smaller ones taste better), there’s a fair bit of surplus. Royal Mash, founded by Rachel de Caen, a trained chef, and Peter Le Fol du Taillis, take the oversized ones and turn them into vodka.
Having slightly ruined vodka for myself in my teen years – blame the nail-varnish-esque Glen’s – I was apprehensive at first, but this stuff is different gravy. Their distiller removes the heads and tails of the process, only keeping the purest and best part, and the fact it’s only distilled once means there’s still a unique Jersey quality to it. Served in a cosmo, espresso martini, martini with a twist or even neat, every sip was clean and smooth.
And it’s not just potatoes that give this island a reason to be proud. I found out that tea can be grown on Jersey (by award-winning Jersey Fine Tea), that a dairy makes its own version of halloumi (mooloomi from Blanc Pignon Dairy Farm, less squeaky, more soft, but just as scrumptious), that the same dairy makes some of the tastiest gelato in existence (the pistachio left me speechless), that Jersey Oysters taste more like the sea than most (thanks to having the third largest tidal flow in the world, the water is some of the cleanest in Europe). And don’t forget Jersey Sea salt (the first to commercially produce solar-evaporated sea salt in Jersey in 300 years).
It’s a special place, and the pride that all producers take in their work is palpable and contagious. A word I hear over and over again is provenance – the history of something matters; where it comes from matters. At first, it felt odd eating barbecued beef after having just met some of the sweetest cows ever, but as David Leng of Blanc Pignon tells me, no one should be eating something if they don’t know where it’s from.
The first of the season’s potatoes, planted early January and lifted in April, have such delicate skins that harvesting them by machine would ruin them; they have to be lifted by hand – the same way in which they’re backbreakingly planted. When I boil one of these up in my Hackney kitchen, roughly 220 miles from where I lifted them, I remember the hard work and dedication from farmers that goes into every single one. I serve them with just garlic and butter and realise – I’ve been converted.
